Apple today added two more channels to the Apple TV, delivering financial news channel CNBC and network FOX NOW to the platform.
CNBC offers access to a live stream of the financial channel, as well as on-demand clips from news segments and full episodes of the channels "Prime" content original series. Viewing requires authentication with one of a number of cable and Internet providers. Notable cable companies not available for authentication include Time Warner and Charter.
FOX NOW includes on-demand access to a number of shows from the network, including 24: Live Another Day, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, Glee, and more. Authentication through a cable provider is required for full access to content.
The deal breaker is the last line of the article. Hopefully they'll break free from cable soon and offer the channels a la carte! As soon as they do, so long cable subscription!!
What holds the model up now is not just ads. It's not the studios getting ad money and "greedy" cable taking the subscription. It's ads + subscription that makes it all go now.
We already have Apple's cut at al-a-carte. Had it for years. Subscribe to just the shows you want via the iTunes store. They even come with the benefit of commercial-free.
The al-a-carte that many think they can get (apparently by whining) is whole channels for near nothing. In other words, their math is 200 channels / $100 per month = 50 cents per channel. "I" want 10 channels, so my "new model" price should be about $5. Take 95% of the cash flow out of any business and that business will die.
The "requires cable subscription" issue is simple. All of the other players besides us consumers LIKE the model "as is". To make the big change "we" desire, THEY need to see how they are going to make MORE money- not less- by switching to what "we" seek. You guys keep whining about cutting the cord and cutting THEIR cash flows too. They don't want to make less money.
To get the al-a-carte "we" want then, involves a "new model" that would up the average revenue made per household now. If that is- say- $100/month now, the rest of the players probably want a "new model" to yield $125/month or more. So, "as is" is 200 channels for $100 month. New model will be "our" 10 or 15 favorite channels for $125/month or more. Channels wouldn't be priced at 50 cents each. They'd be priced like HBO at $10, $15, $20 or more EACH. The end result must be "more money" for the rest of the chain or they don't want to make the change. Why should they?
And what about those commercials? Commercials provide a subsidy. That's other people- companies- paying money into the model just hoping that you might see their commercial and buy something from them. If you have 10 or 15 favorite channels and "190 channels 'I' never watch", that's 190 channels running commercials you never see… that throw money into the pot to discount the model "as is" down to the $100 "we" pay. Kill the 190 channels "I" never watch and "we" kill a LOT of subsidy dollars.
How much is all those commercials worth in a monthly fee (for commercial-free) terms? I've done the math a few years ago. To get rid of all of the commercials and replace that with a monthly fee to make up for them, it would cost every household in America about $54/month.
The al-a-carte crowd is generally dreaming of $5/month, $10/month or maybe as much as $20-30/month. Plus $54/month? No way. But "we" expect the people that make the shows "we" do want to watch can keep making those shows anyway.
Then, there's the miserable dependency of any "new model" replacement over the internet. To connect us consumers with the cloud requires the replacement to work through pipes owned by the cable middlemen who likes their cable revenues "as is" now. Even if an Apple could motivate the Studios to take a HUGE risk and embrace the "new model" now, why should the cable middlemen allow Apple to take their cable TV revenues without making up for that revenues in- say- higher broadband rates.
I love the dream as much as the next guy but it falls apart as soon as we think beyond our own self interest. Very simply, the rest of the players in the chain can NOT make more money AND Apple piling on for a big cut while "we"- the source of all of the money in the model- get a huge discount. We already have programming created on the dirt cheap that might fit the al-a-carte "dirt cheap subscription" dream. It's called youtube.
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Wednesday April 24, 2024 2:05 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Top Rated Comments
Until they break from the cable stranglehold, this is moot. Oh well, keeps me from watching mindless crap anyway. Much better ways to spend my time.
Apart from the fact I live in Europe and my Apple TV only has one channel that works, Netflix.
What holds the model up now is not just ads. It's not the studios getting ad money and "greedy" cable taking the subscription. It's ads + subscription that makes it all go now.
We already have Apple's cut at al-a-carte. Had it for years. Subscribe to just the shows you want via the iTunes store. They even come with the benefit of commercial-free.
The al-a-carte that many think they can get (apparently by whining) is whole channels for near nothing. In other words, their math is 200 channels / $100 per month = 50 cents per channel. "I" want 10 channels, so my "new model" price should be about $5. Take 95% of the cash flow out of any business and that business will die.
The "requires cable subscription" issue is simple. All of the other players besides us consumers LIKE the model "as is". To make the big change "we" desire, THEY need to see how they are going to make MORE money- not less- by switching to what "we" seek. You guys keep whining about cutting the cord and cutting THEIR cash flows too. They don't want to make less money.
To get the al-a-carte "we" want then, involves a "new model" that would up the average revenue made per household now. If that is- say- $100/month now, the rest of the players probably want a "new model" to yield $125/month or more. So, "as is" is 200 channels for $100 month. New model will be "our" 10 or 15 favorite channels for $125/month or more. Channels wouldn't be priced at 50 cents each. They'd be priced like HBO at $10, $15, $20 or more EACH. The end result must be "more money" for the rest of the chain or they don't want to make the change. Why should they?
And what about those commercials? Commercials provide a subsidy. That's other people- companies- paying money into the model just hoping that you might see their commercial and buy something from them. If you have 10 or 15 favorite channels and "190 channels 'I' never watch", that's 190 channels running commercials you never see… that throw money into the pot to discount the model "as is" down to the $100 "we" pay. Kill the 190 channels "I" never watch and "we" kill a LOT of subsidy dollars.
How much is all those commercials worth in a monthly fee (for commercial-free) terms? I've done the math a few years ago. To get rid of all of the commercials and replace that with a monthly fee to make up for them, it would cost every household in America about $54/month.
The al-a-carte crowd is generally dreaming of $5/month, $10/month or maybe as much as $20-30/month. Plus $54/month? No way. But "we" expect the people that make the shows "we" do want to watch can keep making those shows anyway.
Then, there's the miserable dependency of any "new model" replacement over the internet. To connect us consumers with the cloud requires the replacement to work through pipes owned by the cable middlemen who likes their cable revenues "as is" now. Even if an Apple could motivate the Studios to take a HUGE risk and embrace the "new model" now, why should the cable middlemen allow Apple to take their cable TV revenues without making up for that revenues in- say- higher broadband rates.
I love the dream as much as the next guy but it falls apart as soon as we think beyond our own self interest. Very simply, the rest of the players in the chain can NOT make more money AND Apple piling on for a big cut while "we"- the source of all of the money in the model- get a huge discount. We already have programming created on the dirt cheap that might fit the al-a-carte "dirt cheap subscription" dream. It's called youtube.